The Twin Lakes Company was established by Crowley County farmers to provide water for their farms – some of the best farmland in southeastern Colorado.
In 1930, when the demand for irrigation water in Crowley County began to outpace the water available from Twin Lakes, the company acquired water rights from the headwaters of the Roaring Fork River.
In 1936, the Twin Lakes Canal and Reservoir Company completed a collection and diversion system that delivers water from the West Slope into Twin Lakes via a 4-mile tunnel that empties into Lake Creek 12 miles above the reservoir.
Released from Twin Lakes into the Arkansas River, the West Slope water once supported 56,000 acres of Crowley County farmland – orchards, alfalfa, barley, tomatoes, strawberries, cantaloupes, corn and enough beet fields to support a sugar factory.
Since the 1970s, decades of “buy and dry” – buying agricultural land and drying it up to supply water to growing cities – have reduced Crowley County farmland to less than 5,000 irrigated acres. Almost all of the Twin Lakes Company water now goes to Front Range cities, which own 95 percent of the company.
Twin Lakes was enlarged as part of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project. The extra storage space is for Project water, which is managed by the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District.
